Two such simple words that can cause so many problems for unsuspecting politicians and central bankers who are tempted to use the herbaceous description for a nascent economic recovery.

In Britain the description has a particularly toxic legacy. It all began back in 1991 when then Treasury chief Norman Lamont said: “The green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again.” Unfortunately for Mr. Lamont the country remained mired in recession for some time and the term became a short-hand description for the political folly of trying to predict the timing of an economic recovery.

Another to fall victim to the allure of the green shoot was former Business Minister Shriti Vadera, who was chastised for using the term in 2009. At the time the U.K. was in the grip of the financial crisis and Ms. Vadera was labelled insensitive and out of touch for using the description.

As a result, British politicians will go to great lengths to avoid using words that in any way evoke the image of green shoots. Today was a case in point when Treasury chief George Osborne gave his first speech on the economy since signs began emerging of a significant pickup in growth.

The lure of the words ‘green shoots’ to explain the current situation must have been immense, but Mr. Osborne nimbly skipped around it, instead choosing the description “Britain is turning a corner”.

“I’m using my language very carefully,” Mr. Osborne said when directly asked whether there were green shoots on the horizon. “I’m trying to say to people, ‘we are turning a corner, the economic situation is better, but lots of risks remain, and we have to carry on fixing the long term problems in the British economy’.”

Mr. Osborne himself has prior form in being a tad premature in his declarations about the health of the British economy. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in October 2010, Mr. Osborne announced that the U.K. had “moved out of the financial danger zone”. Unfortunately the British economy then barely grew for the next two-and-a-half years, and the country was subsequently stripped of its top-notch triple-A credit rating by two of the three major rating agencies.

British policy-makers are not alone for in their fondness of green shoots. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used the term back in 2009 to describe an improvement in the frozen credit market. And last week European Central Bank President Mario Draghi strayed into the field of green shoots when said he was cautious about the recovery because “the shoots are still very, very green.”